This is Harry Fine's personal blog containing his comments on current Ontario legal issues and the current state, complexities and absurdities of landlord and tenant law in Ontario. Harry is a paralegal with over 15 years practicing landlord and tenant, Small Claims and Human Rights law and is a former member of the Landlord and Tenant Board. The comments in this blog do not constitute legal advice.

Monday, December 5, 2011

I was not surpised to see Auditor general Jim McCarter report on the way Legal
Aid Ontario handles it’s money. As a
paralegal working primarily in the area of landlord and tenant law, I routinely
see 3 staff lawyers paid for by LAO through the Advocacy Centre For Tenants,
Ontario, giving assistance to tenants who can’t or won't pay rent. And these are NOT the destitute or
marginalized, they are every tenant who arrives for a hearing and signs up for
tenant duty counsel. Parties are
supposed to come prepared to proceed, but instead the tenant duty counsel program
operates as an adjournment generator slowing down the Landlord and Tenant
Board. It seems that the most frequent advice given to tenants entering the LAO office is how to get an adjournment which ratchets up the arrears owed and delays the time to eviction.

I have acted for landlords on a number of files over the
years where the legal clinic system, also LAO funded, has taken on the most
flawed and hopeless cases, some of which have gone on for over a year with over
ten appearance, only to have the Landlord and Tenant Board rule against the
tenant. There appears to be no oversight
as to which cases have a reasonable expectation of success, a criteria that should
be a part of the publicly funded system.
Many of my clients are non-profit landlords, and frankly they are often
beaten down by the legal costs while the other side uses the machinery of
government to overwhelm.

It’s one thing to have criminal duty counsel
when incarceration or a criminal record might be the outcome. But to spend millions annually to provide support
for tenants who don’t pay their rent is unnecessary and wasteful. There are lots of ways to trim down our deficit
forecast for $16 billion, but the government doesn’t seem interested in making the
hard decisions.

On the landlord side, there is but one clinic funded to help small landlords with summary legal advice. They have no funding for test case litigation, no lawyers on staff and no legal workers to give advice at the LTB. I think the government needs to look at whether tenant duty counsel is a necessity in these times of huge deficits, when the legal clinics are available to tenants for advice prior to the hearings, and when tenants who qualify can get a private bar lawyer on a legal aid certificate.